The safe-GRID distributed execution environment

Abstract

Modern computer systems spend vast quantities of their operational time idle. With the increasing popularity of the Internet, a common communications medium now exists between much of this un-used computing resource. Considerable work has already been done on brokered distributed execution environments to attempt to leverage this resource, however much of this assumes trust already exists between the parties. This thesis presents a structured study of the difficulty in providing security from the hostile host; identifies a small number of 'anchors of trust' that must be secured to achieve the goal of providing this security; and proposes mechanisms for securing those anchors.